Valerie Reding

Valerie Reding is a transdisciplinaryartist based in Switzerland.

After their training in classical ballet and modern dance in Luxembourg, they studied Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and Media Arts at the Universities of the Arts in Zurich (ZHdK) and Vienna (Angewandte). Besides their academic studies, they worked internationally as a makeup artist in fashion and film, and explored the art of drag in San Francisco’s and Zurich’s nightclubs.

Today, they combine all these experiences in their eclectic artistic practice combining and oscillating between movement, performance, photography, video, text and installation. They work independently as well as collaboratively in varying contexts ranging from alternative and underground spaces to theaters, galleries and other cultural institutions.

Intrigued by the complexities and entanglements of the body, human psychology, interpersonal relationships and the systems of oppression that permeate our societies and identities, Valerie Reding explores the potential of vulnerability, auto-fiction, togetherness, transformation and camp to work on questions around subjectivity and relationality with an intersectional approach.

As their drag alter-ego VulVenim - a seductive, poisonous and gender-questioning shapeshifter - they create thought-provoking and boundary-breaking live performances.

They are also the creative director, producer and host of the queer and pleasure-positive party WET DREAMZ - a community event with various artistic interventions that celebrates all bodies, identities and sexualities. Together with their awareness team, Valerie Reding aims to create a safer space for marginalized communities that tolerates no racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, ableism nor any other kind of discrimination.

Their works have been shown in galleries such as Commonwealth & Council (Los Angeles), Last Tango(Zurich), Kulturfolger (Zurich), FORMA Art Contemporain (Lausanne), LAC (Vevey Imagesfestival) and CUNTemporary (London), they have exhibited and performed at festivals like La Bâtie (Geneva), zürich moves!, Zürich Tanzt, La Dérivée (Yverdon-les-Bains), The Queer Biennial II (LosAngeles), FdS- Festival artistique des affects, des genres et des sexualités (Lausanne), Luststreifen Film Festival (Basel), Superball (Amsterdam) and the Queer Little Lies festival (Luxembourg) as well as at theaters like Rote Fabrik (Zurich), Tanzhaus Zürich, Dampfzentrale (Berne), Arsenic (Lausanne), Théâtre St. Gervais (Geneva), Counterpulse(San Francisco), Escher Theater (Luxembourg), Kulturfabrik (Luxembourg), Le 140(Brussels).

They have collaborated with artists and curators like Simone Aughter lony, Rolando Bassetti, Martin Zimmermann, Lukas Beyeler, Marc Streit, Malika Fankha, BORA, Aron Smith, Daniel Hellmann,Simone Mousset, Renelde Pierlot, William Cardoso, Cee Füllemann, Thomas Giger, Rafal Pierzyński, Antje Schupp, Monique Jenkinson, Alexander Martinz and Bast Hippocrate.